The Fascinating rhythms of politics
The public are no longer dancing to Boris's tune.
The mid-point of a government is always a difficult time for the incumbents. It is when electors expect you to stop campaigning and start delivering. When all those promises you made to get you across the line are not yet bearing fruit and an impatient electorate is looking at their metaphorical watch and tapping their metaphorical feet.
Johnson’s troubles could, at one stage, have been put down to just mid-term blues. Something that could be picked up once he started showing real results and delivering on his agenda. But that is one key problem: He can’t do delivery. he never has. He didn’t do delivery as London Mayor - though he outsourced it better so it was less noticeable. But now in Number Ten, he finds himself increasingly isolated and unable to hire the kind of talent he needs and increasingly attempting to placate factions of his court that once responded to his every whim. And to placate them he needs to hire ever more bombastic blusterers. That is what impresses the hard Brexiteers that Johnson needs to get back onside. But these are also not the people who are going to put their heads down and quietly work to deliver outcomes.
For the most part, this is down to Johnson’s failings as a leader. He wasn’t smart enough when strong to hire to make up for his own defects and instead hired to amplify them. So we have not just a PM, but a complete culture of aggressive avoidance of the truth, inveterate rule-breaking and an attitude that combines the worst of ‘born to rule’ arrogance with ‘one rule for them’ snobbery.
There is not going to be a second vaccine bounce. Omnicom has made it clear that our path out of the pandemic is long and jagged and fraught. Our journey needs constant care, attention and foresight. Instead, we get a cycle of blind boosterism lasting until the consequences are too awful to contemplate followed by extreme swings back towards lockdown - though each instance comes with less support than the last, meaning that each brings down more businesses and key industries such as arts and culture and hospitality continue to suffer immeasurable and possibly irreparable damage.
But the truth is, a few months ago, Boris Johnson could have ridden out most of the scandals. When he was flying high, he would have laughed them off where possible, shrugged them off where needed and if all else failed, hidden in a fridge and gotten away with it
But as we struggle back into normal rhythms, an exhausted electorate is looking for a simpler flow of delivery of the very promises that put an end to the Parliamentary Brexit chaos and largely sustained government popularity throughout Covid. The period between elections should be about a 'heads down' sharp focus on getting things done. There should be a regularity to it, a beat that the electorate can feel instinctively. They don't want to be constantly entertained by it - they want to feel it is marching rhythmically and unobtrusively alongside their lives.
This is not the kind of government that Boris Johnson wants to lead. Delivery bores him rigid. His is an extemporaneous style that hits extraordinary highs when in tune with the nation but is increasingly jarring and discordant when it isn't.
And the hardest truth of all for Johnson to swallow is this: He had gone out of fashion.
Johnson's disastrous few months from the Patterson affair through his Peppa Pig speech to the CBI, endless questions about Number Ten parties and then a bitter byelection defeat don't show anything new about him. And that is the problem. The Johnson that worked for the public just a few months ago has lost his sheen. His own party, those who were dancing along behind him (albeit reluctantly in many cases) are now wondering along with the rest of us: Can Boris change his tune?
From what we are seeing in leaked WhatsApp groups and even more public pronouncements from Tory backbenchers, they don’t seem to believe he can. They intend to keep him in place until they can agree on a successor to unite behind and offer the membership as the ‘Hard Brexiteer’ du jour. But they don’t see him as their long term lord and saviour.
I have occasionally wondered if Boris Johnson ever actually wanted to become PM.
I know that sounds like a weird question. The mad exudes self-belief and ambition and a sense of his own self-importance. His belief not just that he is the new Churchill, but that he is the Churchill of his own cartoonish 2D semi-fictionalised lionisation of Churchill screams “I should be PM”.
But if he had remained frustrated from achieving that final goal, Johnson could have gone down in Tory mythology as the best leader they never had. He never would have had the chance he has had now to prove that belief so spectacularly wrong. He never would have had to do the day to day grind part of the job. He could have earned far more swanning around giving speeches and writing columns and jovially but poisonously criticising those leading the Tories without ever actually having to work too hard to help or to achieve anything.
Johnson’s tragedy is first that he got what he always wanted and he hates it and as a result, the one thing he truly craves - popularity - may now be lost to him forever.
I won’t be crying into my stocking over Johnson’s fate this Christmas. What goes around comes around (and I am sure Theresa May is enjoying a good helping of schadenfreude with her turkey). Johnson deserves the torture he is experiencing now and the lack of relief that is to come.
But for the sake of the rest of us, it is great to see Labour starting to really understand how to take advantage and properly lay the boot in as he is down.
Happy New Year Mr Prime Minister (as Ant and Dec might say).
I run a political and communications consultancy called Political Human. Please get in touch if you are looking for political or media consultancy advice, strategic communication and campaign planning, ghostwriting, copywriting, editing, training or coaching.
You can read some lovely things that some of my clients have said here.
I am also a playwright and director. My debut piece No Cure For Love can be seen here.
Work on my next piece Triggered is continuing apace with a view to staging it next summer. I intend to break the back of the first draft over Christmas (and now I have said so in writing). I do not have a fundraising mechanism for this yet, but a coffee to keep me going would be welcome.
Share your thoughts
So I have been thinking a lot about this newsletter. I really like writing it and the feedback I get from lots of you on it. But while some of you are lovely enough to buy me the occasional coffee, it takes up a lot more time than it pays the bills.
I am looking at different options and I would really appreciate your thoughts. I think the free newsletter will almost certainly go fortnightly in the new year.
There is an option on Substack to have paid content alongside the free. Would anyone sign up for this? This would probably mean you would get two more emails a month than free subscribers. But I might look at doing other types of content such as a live chat, AMAs (that seemed quite popular) and maybe discussions between myself and interesting/cool people that can be watched and interacted with.
What do you lot think? What do you like? What don’t you like? What have you seen elsewhere that really works? Please, please let me know your thoughts. There’s no point doing this without you!
What I’ve been up to
I reviewed Dr Who: Time Fracture - a (sort of) immersive adventure which was quite fun.
If you would like me to attend and review your performance, please get in touch on the email below.
What feels like quite some time ago - especially when politics is moving as fast as it is at the moment - I recorded a podcast on the Labour reshuffle for Labour for a European Future.
Finally, we also put out an episode of The Zeitgeist Tapes on G.B.H. which Steve was clearly delighted to watch again…!
Questions, comments and arguments are very welcome. Insults will get you summarily blocked on every platform that no longer hosts Donald Trump. I’m at emmaburnell@gmail.com or on Twitter (far too often) at @EmmaBurnell_.